Motorcycle thesis project

Hey all...

I am new to this forum. I am an industrial design student who has targeted motorcycle saftey as an area of thesis research.

The areas I hope to improve are braking, cornering, & (a new concept) invisible training wheels. I am presently developing test models experimenting with gyroscopes and adding a 3rd wheel in line to aid braking and steering. The goal is to keep the motorcycle experiance while enhansing saftey and possibly performance. I am looking for someone who can help me figure out some basics of the physics and engineering involved. I am also looking for possible partners or sponsors interested in my research.

If anyone is interested or curious please give me a shout at

 

nice try,troll

 

What does nice try troll mean?

 

It means, "Is that you, Keith?"

 

No Kieth here.......my name is Anthony

 

targeted motorcycle saftey as an area of thesis research.

invisible training wheels. I am presently developing test models
experimenting with gyroscopes and adding a 3rd wheel in line to aid braking
and steering. The goal is to keep the motorcycle experiance while enhansing
saftey and possibly performance. I am looking for someone who can help me
figure out some basics of the physics and engineering involved. I am also
looking for possible partners or sponsors interested in my research.

You should ride a motorcycle for a couple of years first. You will then
realize that gyroscopes and third wheels will be of no use.

 

Im a student at OCAD in Toronto, Ontario

First off I have ridden motorcycles and dirtbikes since i was a kid and I'm almost 30. Secondly, I do apreciate feedback which is why I joined this forum. 3rd I also have a reasonable technical background as I have built several rockcrawler 4x4s.

To the guy who said 3rd wheel and gyroscopes would be of no use......I would like to know why you believe this?

I have not fully broken down my idea for you guys cause I want to get bikers first impressions and opinions. I guess this is a little like maket research.

There are several products which have used gyroscopic technology. Check out this link. (look at the Embrio, Hermes, and Segway)
http://www.gizmo.com.au/go/2350/

 

Hmmph Indeed NOT...I don't use silly names that give it
away. A real name is far more effective. ;^)


I've better taste in such subjects. For instance...

"Can I supercharge a T500 and how much power would I gain"

or

"How do I plumb my GoldWing for a Port-A-Potti for those
REALLY long trips?"

My favorite non-troll troll is "How the hell am I going to
turbocharge my damn wing? "

--
Nefarious Necrologist 42nd Degree
Some people ride, some just like to show off their butt
jewelry once in a while.
Dum vivimus, vivamus
<3 )3~ <3 )3~ <3 )~ <3 )~

 

I'm not the guy who said it, but wouldn't you run into precession
problems whenever the motorcycle leaned over? If the idea is to prevent
leaning over, you have a motorcycle that only goes in straight lines,
and that's not real handy.

Maybe you're planning on just using a small gyroscope to trigger some
more complex system? In that case the above issues may not apply (of
course others might). It's not very clear what you think your gyroscopes
are supposed to do.

As for the 3rd wheel, and again this is just my first impression, if you
put it behind the current rear wheel it doesn't seem like it would add
too much to your braking ability because of weight transfer. On the
other hand, it would increase your wheelbase by quite a lot (larger
turning circle), make turning harder I think (3 points instead of 2,
they won't distribute around the turning radius properly?), and turn
your drivetrain into a nightmare if they are both powered. Never mind
'simple' maintenance issues, weight, cost, etc.

On a totally different subject, you should check the archives here and
look at similar-reading posts. Many of these were trolls, and with your
e-mail it's pretty easy to make that assumption.

HTH

 

http://www.pitstopinfo.com/

 

That's reinventing the wheel. A Texas catheter is better as
far as motorcycles go.

I meant the real thing...

http://www.cabelas.com/products/Cpod0013058.jsp

Just set the cruise control, scoot back onto the potti and
relax...read the WSJ think about the next stop for fuel,
call the broker you know. Bathroom stuff.


--
Nefarious Necrologist 42nd Degree
Some people ride, some just like to show off their butt
jewelry once in a while.
Dum vivimus, vivamus
<3 )3~ <3 )3~ <3 )~ <3 )~

 

Ok.....the name SPHINCTERINCTUS is a little strange. It means gaudy or tacky. So now I guess you guys will all think of me as the guy who makes an ass of himself.

Ok...the idea is that the gyroscope is enabled mainly at LOW SPEEDS and will help balance a heavy bike and make a bike feel more like riding a trike (less lean, more turn)(nice if adjustable?). HIGH SPEED it could be used to help the bike hunch down while stopping thereby keeping a little more weight on the back(anti-dive)and added breaking. The gyroscope could also aid in a quicker recovery from speed wobbles? highsiding?

Precession is something that I do not fully understand as rake calculations may not be the same for a possible rear wheel.

The rear wheel is set to track in the same turn radius as the front. At slow speeds the rear tracks much more (following front wheel) and with the gyroscope which will help (cantilever)keep the bike upright. (picture a snake moving). At high speed the wheel is locked to a fixed position dictated by amount of input from a rider counter-steering. This should automatically keep all wheels as 3 points on the same radius. This I think should increase braking capability and make lowsiding less likely in slippery conditions

So to sum it up.......the gyroscope mainly active at low speeds.
At high speed the gyro may slightly help initiate a turn and it may or may not help with wobbles and highsiding. Main advantage at high speeds would be having more surface area of 3 wheels braking and cornering in a perfect arc or line. 3rd wheel not powered (that would be cool but difficult).

 

I bought a small travel trailer and the owner threw one of those things in.
I have to admit I missed the point of such an elaborate routine to shit
into a small container which you then have to dump out someplace. I think
it might have something to do with wives, but I'm not too sure. Mine was
pretty easy to litter train the first time we were out in the woods.

 

Sounds like if it wasn't a heavy bike it will be with all the added
complexity.

 

I take back the troll accusation, I guess it was a combination of you
moniker and your reference to invisible training wheels. I also didn't
think that it was real likely that anyone doing serious research would look
to a newsgroup for help with physics and engineering. Good luck with your
dream.

 

or tacky. So now I guess you guys will all think of me as the guy who
makes an ass of himself.

Anthony, is it too late to change your major from mechanical
engineering to English?

and will help balance a heavy bike and make a bike feel more like
riding a trike (less lean, more turn)(nice if adjustable?). HIGH SPEED
it could be used to help the bike hunch down while stopping thereby
keeping a little more weight on the back(anti-dive)and added breaking.
The gyroscope could also aid in a quicker recovery from speed wobbles?
highsiding?

That's engineering overkill. Why use gizmos and gadgets, when
motorcycles that don't need to be leaned very much to go around a turn
and which don't try to flip the rider over the handlebars under heavy
braking are already on the road?

Motorcycle design has been influenced far too much over the last
40 years or so by Grand Prix racing with all of its fully faired
multicylinder factory specials that have a great big tire on the back
to avoid heating up too fast with 200+ horsepower applied to it and a
little skinny tire up front to make the machine turn into a corner
quicker. And that little tire would be made even smaller to enhance
quick turn-in, except that with weight transfer to the front under hard
braking, that little tire would heat up too fast, get greasy and then
the bike wouldn't steer...

And the rider has to sit up there,perched on a seat that is about 32
inches off the ground, and every time he does a maximum effort braking
maneuver, the motorcycle tries to spit him over the handlebars...

And those motorcycles have little narrow handlebars to keep the rider
from overcontrolling the machine at high speeds. With the current
telescopic fork design (it's relatively inexpensive to build, so the
factories like it), steering feel changes with each
movement up or down of the fork, and it takes a really good rider to
adapt to steering that is so unpredictable. The really best world class
riders can deal with the unpredicatble suspension, they become world
champions. The rest of us can't. That's one reason why riders of
sportbikes feel "safer" with a really taut suspension that doesn't move
around very much...

But replica racers and production bikes that look just like factory
racers sell very well, there are some sportbikes that don't last a day
on the show room floor before some eager youngster buys it and
sometimes the bike doesn't last a day on the highway either, before the
kid wrecks it or kills himself from over-enthusiasm...

And the tires on those bikes are made of really soft rubber to enhance
traction, the tire profile was developed on a race track where the
motorcycle is continuously turning and needs to turn in quickly for
good laps times and the suspension systems are adjusted fairly stiff to
give a sporty "feel", to hell with the ride...

Light vehicles like motorcycles and sports cars need to have limited
suspension travel or they feel "mushy" to the supposedly-sophisticated
rider who wants to ride fast on some remote 2-lane road that isn't a
race track except in the rider's imagination...

If the suspension spring preload and set too tight, the suspension
doesn't "sag" enough, the bike feels "jittery", if it's too loose,too
much "sag", the bike feels like Grandpa's old Buick...

But, if the weight of the machine is increased, up to around 800 pounds
or so, it can use more suspension travel. Stretch out the wheelbase to
around 5.5 to 6.0 feet and install wider, harder compound tires with
less curvature on wider rims on both ends and use a long handlebar for
leverage, make the rider sit down lower, say around 22 to 24 inches off
the road, and the motorcycle won't try to flip the rider over the
handlebars during a fast stop, nor will it try to do a "wheelie" and
throw him off the back of the machine...

Do all that, and you'll have a motorcycle that doesn't need any
friggin' *gyroscope* to feel solid as a rock going down the road and it
will go down the road all day without breaking the rider's back or
hurting his wrists...

There's a word for that kind of motorcycle. It's called a "cruiser"...

calculations may not be the same for a possible rear wheel.

You don't understand precession and you're mentally masturbating with
adding a gyro to a motorcycle? Hey, Anthony, I once worked in a place
that repaired directional and attitude gyros for the Air Force.
I would have to pick up gyros that were coasting and move them to the
next station for the next step in the process...

The instructions for manually moving a gyro that was coasting down was
to grip *one* gyro firmly with both hands and carry it without making
sudden movements that would cause it to precess into gimbal lock. When
a gyro hits gymbal lock, it will jump right out of your hands...

Oh, you say you don't plan to gymbal the gyro, you're just going to
operate in one plane, with no freedom? Then it will impart unwanted
tirques into the motorcycle's chassis, preventing the motorcycle from
turning freely in some direction...

Mazda was big in international sportscar racing in the 1970's. They had
1-rotor, 2-rotor, even 3-rotor engines in their prototype sports cars.
The rotors in Mazda engine in those days were made of cast iron...

The 3-rotor Mazdas would have different handling characteristics when
turning to the right or to the left...

At slow speeds the rear tracks much more (following front wheel) and
with the gyroscope which will help (cantilever)keep the bike upright.
(picture a snake moving). At high speed the wheel is locked to a fixed
position dictated by amount of input from a rider counter-steering.
This should automatically keep all wheels as 3 points on the same
radius. This I think should increase braking capability and make
lowsiding less likely in slippery conditions

Keep your overly-complicated, unnecessary gyroscopic gizmos, I've never
needed a gyro, don't want one, wouldn't buy a motorcycle that had one,
and 99% of all riders would probably agree with me...

In a traditionally-designed motorcycle, the rear wheel turns tighter
than the front wheel. The front wheel follows a *wider* path than the
rear wheel. This can be seen if you turn through a puddle of standing
water and observe the tire tracks emerging from the puddle onto dry
pavement...

And the rear wheel on a traditionally-designed, swing arm-equipped
motorcycle will vary from slightly negative trail to slightly positive
trail as the swing arm moves up and down...

or may not help with wobbles and highsiding. Main advantage at high
speeds would be having more surface area of 3 wheels braking and
cornering in a perfect arc or line. 3rd wheel not powered (that would
be cool but difficult).

I once though of having a third, non-powered wheel behind the wheel
that propels the motorcycle. The idea was to keep the bike from doing a
wheelie under acceleration. Of course the motorcycle wouldn't *turn*
very well with that three-wheel arrangement...

 

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for all the useful feed back. The last post was particularly good. I will throw up post every once in a while to let you guys know where im at and give some refined details of where I would like to take this project.

 

Let me just note here that references like 'last post' mean little on
usenet. Stuff doesn't have to hit my news server in a particular order,
and often doesn't. I recently responded to a post dated over a year ago,
which appeared on my news server last week. Whether it appeared there a
year ago or not I don't know.

Quoting is a useful practice, as is bottom-posting and trimming posts.
Learn what these phrases mean and learn how they apply to a newsgroup if
you intend to hang out on usenet. HTH

 

tacky. So now I guess you guys will all think of me as the guy who makes an
ass of himself.

will help balance a heavy bike and make a bike feel more like riding a trike
(less lean, more turn)(nice if adjustable?). HIGH SPEED it could be used to
help the bike hunch down while stopping thereby keeping a little more weight
on the back(anti-dive)and added breaking. The gyroscope could also aid in a
quicker recovery from speed wobbles? highsiding?

calculations may not be the same for a possible rear wheel.

slow speeds the rear tracks much more (following front wheel) and with the
gyroscope which will help (cantilever)keep the bike upright. (picture a
snake moving). At high speed the wheel is locked to a fixed position
dictated by amount of input from a rider counter-steering. This should
automatically keep all wheels as 3 points on the same radius. This I think
should increase braking capability and make lowsiding less likely in
slippery conditions

not help with wobbles and highsiding. Main advantage at high speeds would be
having more surface area of 3 wheels braking and cornering in a perfect arc
or line. 3rd wheel not powered (that would be cool but difficult).



=====================================================

Here's the problem with these ideas. Bikes balance perfectly well without
the need for gyros. Your trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

A third wheel is of no use. Distributing the bikes weight to a third wheel
just decreases traction on the other wheels. A bike has a limited amount of
traction which must be carefully distributed between two wheels, specially
when braking heavily into a corner or accelerating heavily out of that
corner. Sticking a third wheel into it makes no sense whatsoever.

Also this statement "less lean, more turn" is senseless. The advantage of a
bike over a trike is that it does lean. We don't want to stop that, it's
what makes a motorcycle a motorcycle.

If you are really into bike safety start designing body armour or training
regiments.

Many student engineers have tried to tackle the "dangerous motorcycle
problem", but what they fail to realize is that there is no problem.

 

wheel just decreases traction on the other wheels. A bike has a limited
amount of traction which must be carefully distributed between two
wheels, specially when braking heavily into a corner or accelerating
heavily out of that corner. Sticking a third wheel into it makes no
sense whatsoever.

Sphincterinctus wants to use a gyroscope to keep his two wheeler from
flipping over when he turns the handlebars at a speed where normal
motorcycles would be countersteering to turn...

But adding a real third wheel makes a whole lot of sense to me. It
depends upon where you put the third wheel, though. Roadracing sidecar
rigs can corner a lot harder than a two-wheeled motorcycle, but are so
heavy they don't accelerate out of corners as well as a two-wheeler.
OTOH, they don't have to slow down as much for the corner, or set the
entrance speed as precisely...

Back in the 1960's, two Brits took the body off of a Mini Cooper S
(the original mini) and moved the two rear wheels very close together.
The "monkey" sat beside the driver in a seat, and did nothing at all,
no acrobatics were required to keep the 3-wheeled, front wheel drive
rig from flipping over. The Brits won every race they entered, and
their rig was outlawed by the sanctioning body, who didn't want the
sidecar class to be taken over by vehicles of non-motorcycle origin...

If I ever get the time, money, and shop space, my pet project for a
three-wheeler would be to build an updated Morgan trike with 2 wheels
up front steering and one wheel in the back, driving the rig...

advantage of a bike over a trike is that it does lean. We don't want to
stop that, it's what makes a motorcycle a motorcycle.

Cars, with four wheels, usually have only three of the four wheels
doing anything useful during hard cornering. If the car is
front-engined, the inside rear wheel will be off the ground in a hard
corner, rear engined cars like Porsches will lift the inside front
wheel off the ground...

Car chassis designers do everything they can to avoid body lean and
camber changes in the front suspension, they don't really want to
use camber thrust to steer the car...

Camber thrust does terrible things to car tires, in terms of wear...

Nevertheless, with modern radial tires, the correct inflation pressures
will result in the laterally-flexible automotive radial running on the
sides of the tire, similar to what motorcycle tires do...

Bridgestone did a study on the physics of motorcycle tires about 20
years ago. You'll find it online if you google for "bridgestone
+tailworking"...

At the time the study was published, mass production of modern
sportbikes had just begun, motorcycle radial tires were being
introduced, and Bridgestone was studying what happened at the extreme
lean angles of around 50 degrees from the vertical that riders were
using to negotiate tight corners at high speeds...

"Tail working" is the term Bridgestone uses in place of the more
commonly-used term "slip angle", which is when the rubber of a tire
resists being distorted by cornering forces and pushes back against the
road, steering the vehicle in the intended direction, while giving up a
small amount of wear in doing so...

Bridgestone's study of camber thrust vs. "tailworking" showed that a
motorcycle gets more and more cornering force from "tailworking" as it
leans farther and farther from the vertical...

Problem is, most street and touring riders do not corner at extreme
angles of lean, they corner at 25 to 30 degrees of lean angle, where
camber thrust is providing the cornering force...

There just isn't any need to use high angles of lean on ordinary public
roads, riders find themselves in tight corners for only a matter of
seconds, while some tight 2-lane road zigs or zags around a tree or big
boulder that the engineers didn't want to move...

So the rider who actually goes somewhere on back roads never actually
uses the "tailworking" or slip angle capabilities of his tires, and
other riders who might do track days will look at the first rider's
tires and notice the so-called "chicken strips" and
ridicule him for not using his motorcycle to the level that wannabe
road racers use their tires...

And Dunlop, Metzeler, Michelin, Bridgestone, etc., continue to develop
their tire profiles on closed course racetracks, where 90% of all
riders will never go, and the only tires we can get that fit our wheels
have rubber that we can't use...

My solution to the problem that Sphincterinctus wants to solve with a
complicated gyroscope system would be to simply insist that the
manufacturers provide motorcycles with wider wheels and wider tires
with less profile and harder compound rubber to last longer...

I read an article a few years ago about a guy who believed that the
tiny front tire business on modern sportbikes was a bunch of bullshit,
just as I do. He installed a *rear* tire on the widest front wheel he
could fit on his bike, and he installed wider handlebars to give him
more steering power, and he said that it worked great, he got what he
hoped for from the wider tire...